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[1] Here “legitimate interest” essentially means “we see your preference not to be stalked, but we want to so we are going to make it that bit more faf to opt out, because fuck you and the privacy we lie about caring about”.
Definitely the spirit of it, though some claim not the letter or it due to loopholes.
> The decline button means decline all.
It certainly should, but I never trust it does (with other dark patterns on show I'm all out of benefit-of-the-doubt) and go into to "details" to look for objection toggles. Not that I particularly trust those anyway, but that is a different niggle!
I agree, it should do. But many sites don't consider the “legitimate interest” crap (“we see your preference not to be stalked, but we want to anyway so you'll have to object separately”) to not be something that they have to get consent for, hence the option is to object/not rather than to consent/not. If you hit decline all without objecting to “legitimate interests” [sic], in at least some case, I suspect many, much tracking will still happen.
> The Google dialog kind of describes it perfectly: "Decline all cookies for this additional purposes".
IIRC Google's preferences don't include any legitimate interest gubbins at all, so that isn't really relevant. And just because one tracking nag screen does things a certain way, does not mean that many others work differently.
The extension I use is called Ghostery and it also claims to block other tracking.
Programming your computer to automatically click "yes" sounds like affirmatively giving consent to all popups to me. The standard for consent here is lower than for things like sex.
Which descriptor do you think is unambiguously violated by making it easier to provide consent than withhold it? To my eyes, both 'freely' and 'informed' are plausibly upheld.
It would be very straightforward to specify that consent and withholding must be equally accessible in the interface, instead of splitting hairs about definitions of "freely given". This is what people refer to when they say the law is poorly written
> Art 7(3) It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent. [0]
But legal interpretation of GP I believe is reaching the consensus that that phrasing too is broken by that implementation:
> Free and informed consent (Art. 7 GDPR): Consent is valid only if it is freely given. When the option to decline is hidden or unnecessarily cumbersome, the user's choice is affected and consent is no longer "free." [1]
[0] https://gdpr.eu/article-7-how-to-get-consent-to-collect-pers...
[1] https://www.ictrechtswijzer.be/en/complaint-about-cookies-wi...
Now I'm left wondering why enforcement was supposedly so hard. Seems like shooting fish in a barrel, especially given that some very large websites were in clear violation of this article
To quote Article 4(11) – Definition of Consent
> ‘Consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.
Meaning if you force users into pressing a button or let them scroll through 1000 no options, with one easy yes option, you have not collected their free consent. Congrats you broke the law.
Meaning if you just have them click yes, but not informed them about the harmful data collection you did not collect free consent.
The law is pretty clear on that.